England's new-look rugby squad must now live up to Stuart Lancaster's good intentions

When the people of Bramhope near Leeds heard the England rugby squad were
coming to town they might have been tempted to complain to the local council
on public-order grounds. Surely they hid all their booze and dwarves.

Leading man: Stuart Lancaster has set the tone for his new-look England squadPhoto: JOHN GILES

It falls to the new men here at the splendid West Park rugby club in Leeds to play good and bad cop at once. Miscreants had to be punished or purged.

Mike Tindall is out altogether and serial on-pitch offender Delon Armitage is in the cold. Danny Care, arrested for drink-driving, served himself up for Lancaster to declare intolerance of hedonistic ways.

Lancaster promoted nine uncapped players and made 15 changes from England’s doomed World Cup squad. After a month of laudable statements he must be running out of good intentions.

A skill will be to know when to stop the sermons and allow this new squad to find their own equilibrium between fun and the professionalism that went over the side, like Manu Tuilagi, in New Zealand.

“The first meeting will be about trying to get a sense of team and team-ship and get them to understand about where we’re going on the journey,” Lancaster told his first big media scrum. “It’s going to paint a vision for them about what the future looks like — and get them excited and engaged in that.”

This could have come from any head teacher or senior company manager but already Lancaster has the Care expulsion and Tindall cull to support his argument.

“If we can achieve that,” he continued, “day two in the evening becomes — OK, let’s learn from what we haven’t done so well, and establish some real ground rules about what we want to be as a group.

“They come as written rules — a code of conduct, which we’ll go through, but also those unwritten rules which elite performers should abide by. We’ll have a leadership group meeting in the morning and agree it with them, then talk it through with the rest of the group in the evening and then culturally through the week.

“Whilst we’ve got the layering on the game plan, on Wednesday night, we’ve got the meal out with Dave Brailsford, Hugh Morris and Kevin Sinfield [from cycling, cricket and rugby league respectively].

"On Thursday night we’ve got the talk from Jamie Peacock, plus one other, to be confirmed, and someone’s coming from the army to talk about what it means to play for England.

“There’ll be a video of where England have been and where we want to go. A few things like that start to shape the culture. If we do that we’ll harness the energy we’ve got.”

Lancaster promises unity by the time Scotland strike up the bagpipes: “I think we’ll be tight.”

Harder than curtailing ferry-jumps and benders will be persuading the wider public that English rugby has not succumbed to decadence and self-regard.

To regain the country’s respect he could hardly do more than shift the camp to Leeds, drop the old guard, start a fresh developmental cycle and promise less bish-bash-bosh on the field.

Short of washing the car and clearing the guttering of every England fan offended by the World Cup debacle it would be hard to come up with anything new in the way of PR dance moves.

Not that Lancaster is an empire builder. He is, remember, auditioning for the job full-time. A more pragmatic type would have put results first and surrounded himself with proven warriors (Nick Easter, for one).

Instead he talks of “growing a group of leaders in the 24, 25, 26 age range.” He is the custodian of a future he will not be around to share if the Rugby Football Union hires a big-name foreign coach at the end of this Six Nations.

The players know this. Many will reserve judgment until they have seen how he handles pressure in tight games, whether he makes the right decisions and how loyal he is to them.

Several know him from their Saxons and junior days but this is different. This is Lancaster’s big test as much as it is theirs.

The Tindall issue was not dwelt on. “It’s actually about Brad Barritt and Jordan Turner-Hall and Henry Trinder coming in,” Lancaster said. That would be true had the Queen’s grandson-in-law not laid on a very plausible Oliver Reid impersonation in New Zealand.

As for Joe Marler’s Mohican, Rowntree said he would not be frog-marching him to the barbers.

“It’s up to Joe. That’s irrelevant to me,” he said. And now it is up the players to show they deserve this rebirth.